RECENT ADVANCE IN ANALTICAL TECHNIQUES FOR THE STANDARDIZATION AND QUALITY CONTROL OF HERBAL MEDICINE

The escalating global reliance on botanical therapeutics has intensified the demand for rigorous standardization and quality control (QC) protocols to ensure their safety, efficacy, and reproducibility. Unlike conventional pharmaceuticals, herbal medicines possess highly complex, multi-component matrices whose phytochemical profiles are heavily influenced by genetic, environmental, and post-harvest variables. This inherent variability poses significant challenges to traditional analytical methodologies, frequently leading to issues of adulteration, contamination, and inconsistent therapeutic dosing. Consequently, recent decades have witnessed a paradigm shift toward the development of advanced, multidimensional analytical platforms designed to achieve comprehensive phytochemical characterization. Chromatographic advancements have been pivotal in this evolution. High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) remains a cost-effective tool for preliminary fingerprinting, while Ultra-Performance Liquid Chromatography (UPLC) and Gas Chromatography (GC) offer superior resolution and sensitivity for the simultaneous quantification of multiple bioactive markers. The coupling of these separation techniques with high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS and GC-MS) has revolutionized structural elucidation, enabling the precise identification of trace compounds and the detection of unauthorized synthetic adulterants.